Four months ahead of the Sochi Olympics, it's hard to criticize the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association. Americans have conquered the Austrian-centric Alpine world. They own snowboarding and now they're winning Nordic events, too. Clearly, the USSA leadership has made some great decisions of late. But they made a bad call earlier this year when they cut national champion Kris Freeman from the U.S. cross-country team.

Even though Freeman will likely make it to the Olympics next year, the move cost him not only the chance to collect thousands of dollars in funding from the U.S. Olympic Committee, but also his USOC-subsidized health insurance.

This is no minor matter. Freeman has Type 1 diabetes, also known as "juvenile" diabetes, which is typically triggered early in life by an autoimmune disorder. His health-care costs aren't small; he has been on COBRA since he got booted from the team.

Though Freeman is a three-time Olympian who has been among the three best Americans in the overall rankings the past six years, he's a victim of the USSA's formula for success. The federation has an annual budget of about $25 million and spends the bulk of it to support and develop hundreds of athletes, coaches and trainers. With no government support, which similar federations in Europe receive, finances are limited, so the USSA has begun tracking the performances of all of its athletes and measuring them against all other elite skiers. Athletes who drift too far outside the curve of a potential Olympic medal winner stand to lose financial support.

Freeman won 50-kilometer national championships in 2011-2013, but didn't achieve a high enough ranking on cross-country skiing's international circuit last season to claim an automatic spot on the U.S. team. "I was told that my trajectory was not what they were looking for," said Freeman, who is 33.

"You fall out of the top 30 in the rankings, they'll give you a second year, but if it happens two years in a row they cut you," said Andy Newell, a U.S. team member.

The USSA says it would rather invest in youth development than older skiers who haven't excelled on the biggest stage. Freeman has never finished better than 14th in an individual Olympic race, though he was part of a relay team that finished fifth in 2002. Winning a medal in Sochi would be a stunning achievement for Freeman given his disappointing results internationally the past two seasons, when he ranked 50th and 54th in distance races.

During a recent interview in Park City, Bill Marolt, chief executive of the USSA, said the federation "has to look at our best opportunities given the resources that are available."

Now Freeman has to cover his health-care costs and nearly all of his training and travel expenses until the Olympics—even though he remains one of the top long-distance skiers in the U.S. Freeman won't say how much he has had to shell out for his COBRA payments. "It's not cheap," he said. "It's not any fun at all." Getting cut also cost him the chance to receive thousands of dollars in travel expenses and $2,450 annually in direct support from the USOC.

Sponsorships cover some expenses, but Freeman is hardly Roger Federer. His five equipment deals are worth about $10,000 combined. Sponsorships with pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and the maker of an insulin pump he wears bring his income into the mid-five figures.

That he continues to compete at an elite level at all is remarkable. He wears that insulin pump to control his blood sugar level. Before races that can last more than two hours he has to set his insulin pump according to the altitude, snow condition and his estimate of the likely pace.

But there is no protocol. Freeman is a science experiment on skis. Six seconds off the lead midway through the 30-kilomenter race in Vancouver, Freeman collapsed. He downed a sports drink and a sugar-rich gel pack. Then he got up and finished 45th.

He spent the summer at home in New Hampshire doing 30-mile runs up and down multiple peaks, and 60 mile jaunts on roller skis during which he used only his poles. He spent much of September training on a glacier at 11,000 feet near Bormio, Italy.

November brings the start of the World Cup circuit, where food and lodging for World Cup participants costs $150 a day. As an American, he'll have access to the U.S. team's coaches and support staff, including the wax technicians. He doesn't know yet whether he'll have to pay for his own wax.

If you are all about betting on likely medal winners, history and modern medicine suggest Freeman is a long shot. Still, doesn't a three-time Olympian who remains elite nationally and competes with unrivaled courage at least deserve Team USA health insurance?

Maybe getting cut off will prove advantageous. There is a certain edge in Freeman's voice these days. He seems determined to prove the USSA made the wrong decision.

Corrections & Amplifications Kris Freeman is the reigning 50-kilometer U.S. national champion in cross-country skiing. An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to him as a former national champion.

Some of these comments miss the mark, mostly because the article is so poorly researched. Yes, of course, the U.S. ski team should allocate scarce resources to try and maximize performance. And that's just the point. Instead of offering the meaningless metric of Olympic performance (the fallback for any writer who does not know much about a niche sport; and the Olympics are even more irrelevant here, given that Freeman had diabetes and ski waxing issues in Vancouver, and relay results are by definition dependent on others), the writer might have mentioned that he has finished 4th twice in events at the cross-country World Championships, the most important biannual event in the sport. Cutting Freeman was a bad decision because on any given day, albeit less frequently than a decade ago, he can be one of the premiere distance skies in the world. The article also fails to point out recent top-ten World Cup finishes.

But yes, on top of sheer performance, is there really anything wrong with making a decade of service to an organization a relevant consideration, too? NFL owners tend to make excellent allocate-scarce-resources capitalists, but even they often keep a popular veteran on the team for a couple years at more than market value to reward loyalty and to please the fans. Does the U.S. Ski team have to be more cutthroat than NFL owners?

BTW, it's funny that one of the commenters above can't imagine that anyone reading the Journal supports Obamacare. Says a lot about the diversity of opinions in the Journal.

The media likes to celebrate success in all forms, but especially in athletics. One seldom reads articles about the life of the athlete who loses his/her competitive edge, or who never makes it to "greatness", or who never makes it at all after years of effort.

Look, I'm sorry that he got cut, due to the criteria that apparently EVERYONE has to be subject to. What is the point of this article? I wish him the best, but this has the overall tone of whining, and doesn't really belong here. This is the thinking that gets everyone who shows up a trophy in little league now. Next week, cover some players cut from the NFL scout teams, ok?

Cold shoulder? This appears to be about job performance. I'm an aging, broken down pro athlete myself - with two arm surgeries and age 28 approaching, I'm not bitter about the fact that if I don't outperform the younger athletes by a WIDE margin, I'm the one who gets released from my contract. This article appears to be more about his health insurance lapsing, and while that certainly is a shame, governing bodies and pro organizations who exist only to win must discard athletes who aren't optimal contributors. I feel for my fellow athletes' plight, but we're all playing by the same rules - eat or be eaten. I'm sure this skier understands the conditions of his release; perhaps the author does not. Those of us who play the game understand its cruelty; those who don't, well, don't. This is a typical example of just how amazing and heartbreaking pursuing pro sports can be.

Does he have a non-profit to fund his continued participation? For all of us old athletes who see someone really continuing to try, it is inspiring. Maybe this was a marketing piece for his funding needs.

This story is a non-starter for me. One competes in the work place and so too in athletics. The former category represents the bulk of working Americans, the later a more specialized, gifted group. Both groups have ambitions. Life is about aspirations, dreams and outcomes. The outcome part is not always a happy ending. When it involves a wage earner, the loss of a job or the ability to find meaningful work is a heavy burden which falls upon the individual and often a family. As to the athlete in the story. They've been blessed to compete and now Life is telling them to move on and join the rest of us. Just as an athlete never quits, a worker and a family must also go on as nothing is guaranteed in this world.

Great comment, Dan. You're spot on, and it's also a typical example of what happens when athletes (or an entire sport) are wholly dependent on their national governing body for funding / support. I work in another Olympic / niche sport and we routinely see situations where athletes are cut off from support because they don't meet the projections for what will make the podium at the next Olympics. Olympic sports and their NGBs base their funding decisions solely on current and anticipated performance, rather than marketability. Athletes in "true" pro sports can be well outside the top 100 but still earn a steady income through a diverse revenue stream that includes - but is not dependent on - performance. This single-factor approach to assessing athletes' prospects stems out of adherence to the "Olympic ideals" of performance above profit. Under this system funding becomes a zero-sum game for those in the athlete pool, and we ensure a steady stream of stories like Kris Freeman's.

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